Re: Code LA Will Provide New DNA for LA's Future

In a maze of cubicles in Los Angeles City Hall, a team of planners is moving forward with the first comprehensive overhaul of the city's building code since it was created in 1946.

Postwar Los Angeles was still a low-rise landscape with lots of undeveloped suburbs when City Hall put together the zoning code that serves to this day as the basis for development in the much transformed metropolis.

But not serving well, by most accounts.

"It's the Achilles heel of our development process," said Michael LoGrande, planning director for a city that now counts some four million residents.

What was little more than a slim pamphlet in 1946 has over the decades grown by hundreds of pages with amendments, piecemeal revisions and hearing decisions.

"What we've been doing is creating a quagmire of regulation," said senior planner Tom Rothmann, who heads the team that is now two years into the daunting task of overhauling the code.

"The biggest problem we're finding is layers of zoning," Rothmann said. "We need to cut through that."

For now, even simple projects can require lawyers and land use experts to search out the rules and conditions that would apply to a particular proposed development.

"I want to make it understandable for ordinary people," said Sharon Commins, a Mar Vista resident and co-chair of the Zoning Advisory Committee.

The mission is called re:code LA, and the goals include digitally organizing zoning law so that inputting location will generate all the applicable zoning provisions, popping up on the computer screen in your office, home, or even on your smartphone.

The traditional residential, commercial, and industrial zone designations would also be updated, and in some cases the number of subcategories expanded, so that zoning can be more community specific.

Lumping all LA's residential neighborhoods into one category, R-1, does not reflect the enormous differences between them, in Rothmann's view. Distinctions will help communities control the "mansionizing" phenomenon in which an existing house is remodeled or replaced with a larger structure towering over the rest of the neighborhood, Rothmann said.

It's also hoped that overhauling the code will streamline, and in some cases, speed up the review process.

The zoning code specifies what can be built in a particular location, as opposed to the building code, which specifies minimum construction standards.

Every construction project must be approved by the city's Building and Safety Department, but the Planning Department evaluates only larger projects — commercial buildings over 50,000 square feet, and apartments with 50 or more units. LA has many 49-unit apartment buildings.

"We want to make a more business friendly environment," said LoGrande, citing downtown's Bunker Hill as an example.

Though for the past half century it has been characterized by high-rises, the mechanism for approving new skyscrapers is so cumbersome and time-consuming it can discourage developers, LoGrande said.

"We go through a 200 page, two year entitlement process," LoGrande said. "We want to make sure people know LA is open for business."

Recoding is only the first step in updating the planning for LA's future. The zoning code provides the DNA, as the analogy goes. It will then been used to re-envision the individual plans for LA's 35 designated communities.

As a result, the impact of re:code will not be uniform across the city, but will vary by area. There's not just one planning vision for LA's future, but 35.

Planners expect re:code will enable a more walkable, pedestrian-friendly city, with more mixed use buildings that put residents above commercial districts.

LoGrande also expects re:code to support the trend of intensive development along transit rail corridors, and accommodate increased construction of affordable housing.

He also hopes it will give planners more power to improve the architectural and aesthetic standards of larger apartment complexes.

Re:code will choose no sides in the ongoing conflict how best to ease LA's traffic congestion and meet parking demand, officials said.

Some see not requiring developers to provide as many parking spaces as a way to nudge travelers out of their cars and into public transit.

Community plans for different areas could take different approaches, depending, for example, on availability of transit.

Downtown's two communities are the first priority for code revision and plan updating, expected to be ready for public comment by year's end.

Finishing re:code for the rest of the city could take up to another two years.

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